Communications in deep space haven’t changed a lot since NASA launched its earliest probes in the late 1950s. Everyone still uses giant radio dishes to talk to rovers on Mars or spacecraft orbiting Mercury. Radio is dependable, but here on Earth, we’ve moved on. Aside from NPR on your car radio, you probably get most of your news via broadband. And broadband sends data in pulses of laser light.

“Our Internet is completely powered by pulsed lasers that run through optical fibers in big cities,” says Don Cornwell, project manager for the new communications system at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Lasers are fast and can send huge amounts of data a long way. But doing it from space presents a problem: Ever tried to steady a laser pointer during a presentation?

“We’re currently demonstrating 622 megabits per second of data transmission, from the moon down to the Earth,” Cromwell says. That’s already six times faster than the fastest radio communications, and the laser system could eventually be much faster still.

It’s not perfect. For example, it won’t work if it’s cloudy on Earth. For that reason, Cromwell’s team have built multiple ground stations in California, New Mexico and on the island of Tenerife in Spain. And the laser would have to be boosted in power in order to work over longer distances, like between the Earth and Mars.

But if it can be built, it will be a huge help to astronauts on deep-space missions. For example, a laser system could transmit HD video of equipment in need of fixing to engineers back on Earth, Cornwell says. Astronauts could also get their fill of really bad sci-fi.

Those missions are father off, but the unmanned probes of today would also benefit, says John Grotzinger, project scientist for the Curiosity Rover now exploring Mars. Like everyone else, Curiosity uses standard radio communications, and Grotzinger says it’s holding the team back: “With this additional [laser] capability we would be less limited in terms of how much data we could both acquire and downlink to Earth,” he told NPR in an e-mail. “That would be a really nice improvement.”